Associate Director – AI Innovation Lab, Human-centered Design

• Lead customer innovation engagements end to end, from challenge framing and executive workshops through prototype direction, evidence and decision
• Serve as strategic customer contact and trusted advisor to senior leadership
• Shape the brief, engagement arc and success measures with customers and account teams
• Connect immersion, co-design, workshops, build, test and post-Lab follow-through
• Lead CIOs, CTOs, COOs and leadership teams through ambiguity, challenge and decisions
• Translate business priorities, user needs and operational realities into opportunities, value hypotheses and design challenges
• Define roles, knowledge, decisions, handoffs, exceptions, control and accountability across human-AI systems
• Direct creative technologists, designers, researchers and engineers through focused build cycles
• Define testing evidence using research, realistic scenarios, synthetic personas and system evaluation
• Connect evidence and recommendations to executive next steps such as sprints, pilots or transformation initiatives
• Turn validated work into reusable methods, patterns, components, prompts, agent states, policies, evaluation sets and reference builds
• Build complementary strengths across design, consulting, AI and business strategy; set quality standards and coach teams
• Own engagement architecture, outcomes, customer relationship and path to durable business value
• Connect business intent and intended experience to technical delivery
• Keep approximately 10% of capacity for moonshots in human-AI collaboration, embodied AI and adaptive interfaces

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in design, HCI, business, engineering, computer science, architecture or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 10+ years in design, innovation or consulting
• 3+ years leading multidisciplinary teams and owning senior customer or executive relationships
• Portfolio with case studies of engagements led end to end
• Business-level fluency in English
• Executive presence and facilitation skills
• Business acumen and consulting judgment
• Significant experience leading service, product, experience or innovation work from research through validation and outcome
• Experience shaping and running complex customer workshops, Lab engagements or consulting programs
• Understanding of generative and agentic AI systems
• Experience aligning designers, creative technologists, researchers, engineers, industry experts and commercial teams
• Willingness to travel to customer sites and Lab locations
• Preferred: Master's degree or MBA
• Preferred: consultancy, innovation lab, product studio or creative agency background
• Preferred: Figma, FigJam or Miro; workshop and design-sprint facilitation; generative AI tools
• Preferred: digital, spatial or physical prototyping and responsible AI governance, risk and model evaluation familiarity
• Preferred: business development proposal, pitch and thought-leadership experience

Core Competencies

Demonstrates expertise in leading customer innovation engagements, translating business priorities into design challenges, and guiding multidisciplinary teams through complex projects. Proficient in connecting technical delivery with business intent while fostering strong executive relationships.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Customer Innovation Leadership
• Multidisciplinary Team Management
• Business Acumen
• Generative AI Systems Understanding
• Workshop Facilitation

Hard Skills

• Design
• Innovation
• Consulting
• Prototyping
• Research
• Validation
• Outcome Measurement
• Human-AI Systems
• Service Design
• Product Development

Soft Skills

• Executive Presence
• Facilitation Skills
• Consulting Judgment

Certifications & Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree
• Master's Degree
• MBA

Industry Keywords

• Customer Engagement
• Design Sprint
• Innovation Lab
• Creative Agency
• Business Development

Tools & Technologies

• Figma
• FigJam
• Miro
• Generative AI Tools